Vantage Point North

For the past weeks the social media has been filled with sightings of Russian troops moving towards the regions bordering Ukraine. The buildup was initially called an exercise, but in the most recent press releases Kremlin has been rather clear that the troops have been deployed there as an operational deployment, if Russia feels a need to act upon any real or imaginary escalation in Donbass. The troops will stay in the region as long as President Putin sees it necessary. Russia Serna-Class landing crafts of the Caspian flotilla The initial buildup was focused on occupied Crimea that has so far received an additional VDV airborne regiment, multiple mechanized battalion tactical groups and heavy artillery units equipped with at least the enormous 240mm 2S4 Tulpan mortars.  Additional trains and convoys have been spotted in Rostov, Krasnodar and Voronezh regions. The Russian controlled Belarusian military has also been alerted and multiple, very Russian looking units are operating in...

White Guards at Lemi In January 1918 Finland was in turmoil. While the nation had mostly avoided the horrors of the Great War and successfully declared itself independent in December of 1917, the population was divided between socialists and the rest, the Reds and the Whites. After mid January both the Red Guards and the Suojeluskunta, also known as White Guards, began to clash, especially in Karelia. The Imperial Russian army was still occupying Finland and the White Guards managed to disarm the passive Russian forces in Sortavala, Antrea and Joensuu. On the 26th the socialist Red Guards begun an open revolution. In January 26th the Suojeluskunta Battalion from Viipuri, that had regrouped at Venäjänsaari after communists took over the city, began to march, mostly on skis, towards the railway stations at Kämärä and Säiniö in order to disrupt the vital railway line between Petrograd and Vyborg. The battalion had roughly 500 white guards and its forward elements managed to capt...

The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service SUPO was transformed into a full-blown intelligence agency when the new intelligence laws for military and civilian intelligence were passed this summer. In the new role SUPO can now engage in activities like network traffic intelligence and intelligence operations abroad. While the new powers are not yet fully utilized, SUPO's situational awareness should have improved a lot in the recent months. SUPO recruitment poster On December 5, 2019 SUPO published its annual assessment of the Finland’s security situation. It splits the Finnish security environment into four areas:            Foreign intelligence activity targeting Finland and Finns            Cyber espionage            Threat of terrorism in Finland            Hybrid threats SUPO openly states that the most active intelligence agencies oper...

On October 5 th  1939 the USSR invited Finnish representatives to negotiations in Moscow. The Finnish government draw the correct conclusion that USSR was going to demand territory and bases from Finland. But the Finnish government wasn’t ready to roll over in the negotiations. The signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany and the following invasion of Poland by the two, had made the Finnish leadership somewhat alarmed. During the October 1939 the USSR had demanded bases from the Baltic states. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania saw that they had no choice but to comply with the demands as they were trapped between the co-operating dictatorships. Some leverage had to be created for the Finnish government. So it was decided that the best way to counter the Soviet pressure was to mobilize the Finnish army . But instead of announcing a general mobilization, Finland begun an “extra refresher training for the reservists”.  Finnish Cavalry de...

" Unidentified troops have taken over several government buildings, an harbor and airports across Finland. Finnish army has alerted it’s available conscripts, mobilized the reserve local battalions and sent them to support police and border guard units engaging the hostile forces. The local authorities have began transitioning into a crisis mode. " That's how my March 11, 2017 article "Countering the Hybrid War - The Finnish Way" begun. Police and Army during a local defense exercise It has now been two years since that article. So has the Finnish approach of comprehensive security, combined with conscript based military, evolved during the past two years? From the military perspective the framework laid before has remained the same. The proposed changes in the legislation have mostly been passed and they include: - Comprehensive intelligence laws that cover both military and civilian intelligence - Laws regarding the use of forc...

The ongoing escalation of hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz may have effects far beyond the middle east. The capture of the British flagged oil tanker Stena Impero by the Iranians forced the UK to step up their presence in the region. HMS Monmouth a Type 23 Frigate The reinforcements the Royal Navy was able to send to the Persian Gulf were hardly enough to escort the number of tankers in need of protection. The present day 80-ship Royal Navy no longer rules the waves and is actually struggling to deploy enough combat ships to cover the existing commitments, let alone to take on a possible fight against the Iranian navy or even provide the dozen or so escorts needed. The British government then sent a proposal to create a European naval mission to escort the vital tanker traffic through the Hormuz. The response frhciting the wish to avoid further escalations as the main reason, both also have limited amount of shirps and other operations to cover. USA, under the Tr...

The social stability in Finland had steadily deteriorated as the newly independent nation lacked both police and military forces and the Russian army still had a strong presence within the Finnish borders. Both socialists and conservatives had begun to build their own security forces during the previous summer. Red Guards and Russians supporting them To solve the situation, that had already escalated into sporadic violence and acts of terror, the Finnish Senate, with a mandate from the elected Parliament, declared in 25th of January1918 that the Civil Guards would become the Senates army under the command of the General Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, a 30 year veteran of the Imperial Russian Army. The Reds immediately refused to obey the order to stand down their military forces. The Civil Guards began to disarm the Russian garrisons and used the captured weaponry to arm their forces. During the 27 th of January 1918 the Red Guards issued a full-scale mobilization within the...

Even though the Zapad2017 drill, that rehearsed assault through the Baltics to relieve the Kaliningrad enclave, has ended, the Russian armed forces are not resting on their laurels. Today Russia announced that it will begin a control check that will include all military units in all of the military branches. Photo: Konstantin Semenov  The control checks will be conducted in two phases. During the first phase of the tests over 300 active duty formations will be brought to combat readiness and tested by the inspectors. These checks will happen before the 15 th of October. The checks will be held in 120 training areas across the Russian federation. There will be a significant number of tactical level exercises with troops relocating from their bases to the training areas. The amount of ground forces combat units involved can reach up to 120 000 soldiers . The only exception to this rule are the units that participated in the Zapad2017 exercise, these units will be i...

Kalynivka depot explosion. (Photo: REUTERS) As the night fell, a large Ukrainian armed forces ammunition storage was engulfed in flames at Kalynivka. The fires spread rapidly across the facility that contained 188,000 tons of munitions. Luckily most of the compartmentalization features, such as bunkers and steel walls have managed to limit the damage to about 30 % of the munitions stored there. This is the third ammunitions dump fire in Ukraine recently. All of these have been active facilities that are storing relevant and modern munitions and all have been feeding the Ukrainian Army units defending Ukraine against the Russian aggression. These are not some half-derelict old depots, looked after by the washouts the military wants to hide from sight. The Ukrainian security service has claimed that the previous fires/explosions were Russian sabotage operations. The Balakliya dump was claimed to have ignited by an explosive device dropped from a Russian drone. Similar cla...

a MTLB landing from the landing ship Severomorsk to Kotelny The Russian Northern Fleet has been very active lately, in addition to the usual landing drills close to the fleets home ports in the Kola peninsula, the fleet has been roaming the Russian northern coast with a landing squadron that carries a mix of marines and Arctic brigade specialists from the Alakurtti military base. This unit has now made a landing drill at the remote island of Kotelny that sits between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. The squadrons last supply point, where the crews and troops were allowed to rest and refit was in Dudinka. The distance from Dudinka to Kotelny is roughly 2000 km. This distance corresponds closely to the distance between the fleets home base in Kola and Iceland. The geography and the size of the islands are also very similar. From Dudinka to the Kotelny It is very important to test these kind of long distance naval operations in advance as the troops and ...

Countering the Hybrid War — The Finnish Way Army, Police and Border Guard troops co-operating Unidentified troops have taken over several government buildings, an harbor and airports across Finland. Finnish army has alerted it’s available conscripts, mobilized the reserve local battalions and sent them to support police and border guard units engaging the hostile forces. The local authorities have began transitioning into a crisis mode. Luckily all this action belonged to a series of readiness exercises designed to increase the defense readiness and co-operation across the Finnish society. Finland is facing a new reality with rapidly evolving security threats. After the invasion of Crimea, the Russian “Little Green men” and other “hybrid war” actions have become a very real scenarios that the Finnish authorities have to train for.  Finland has actively shifted its defense stance  more towards counter hybrid threats with higher readiness and mobilization speed...